


Fan Tan Alley

by standbygo



Series: Coventry [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Enthusiastic Consent, Language Kink, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:04:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8929534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: This is a sequel to Coventry, but can be read alone if you squint at the plotty bits.Basically, Sherlock was a multiple personality of sorts, and is now integrated; he and John are on the lam and have ended up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Case fic involving Victoria's Chinatown, in the infamous Fan Tan Alley.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not redistribute my fanfiction on other archives or sites without my express permission. Thank you.

John let himself into the hotel suite, and was greeted by the sight of Sherlock Holmes draped dramatically in a wing chair, his long arms and legs sprawling to impossible lengths.

“Bored!” Sherlock pronounced.

“And a good morning to you,” John replied without rancour. “And here’s the Times, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, and Vancouver Sun. They didn’t have the Daily Mail, but I was assured that the Sun was a worthy equivalent.”

He flipped each newspaper into Sherlock’s lap and sat in the chair opposite. “Going to get dressed today, then?”

“Why?”  Somehow Sherlock made the short word draw out what felt to John like a full minute, ending on a minor note.

“Well, if you got dressed, you could come out with me. It’s lovely out.”

“Dull.”

“I suppose you parading up and down Government Street in your jimjams would be a bit less dull. If you’re really bored you could make the bed.”

“Cigarettes.”

John hesitated for a moment, not sure how the conversation had taken such an abrupt turn. “What now?”

“Cigarettes. I want some.”

“Since when did you smoke?”

“Vernet smoked. Just not on concert days.”

“Every day for Vernet was a concert day. You’re making that up.”

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. “One of them did, I’m sure. I just know I want cigarettes. Smokes. Fags. Gasper. Nicotiiiiiine.”

John opened one of the papers and pretended to read it. Sherlock leapt up, dumping the rest of the papers from his lap to the floor.

“Can’t you hear me? I’m about to die of boredom. _Why_ did Mycroft exile me to the colonies?”

“Give me that. You know perfectly well. And we weren’t exiled.”

“Might as well be. I’ve been cooped up in here for _ages."_

“We’re not under house arrest, Sherlock. Get dressed and go for a walk with me.”

“Tiresome.”

“Explore the city some more.”

“Tedious.”

John played his ace in the hole. “Go shopping for clothes.”

Sherlock hesitated for a nanosecond before saying, petulantly, “No.”

John watched Sherlock whirl around the room, hands in his hair. God, this brilliant, unique, impossible, infuriating man, who made his heart beat faster even when he was at his most irritating.

“Right then,” John said. He stood, lifting his chin high, gazing evenly at Sherlock. “You’re bored, are you? I know just what to do about that.”

Sherlock had enough time to turn to John, confusion knotting his brow, before John rushed him and knocked him over onto the bed. John fell on top of Sherlock, immensely satisfied with the look of surprise and the whoosh of air knocked out of him as they landed.

“Still bored?” John said, and pinned Sherlock down with a fiery kiss.

Sherlock’s eyes lit up, and he gazed up at John with the smile that John knew was only for him.

“John Watson, you are _brilliant_.”

Half an hour later, the bed was substantially messier, and Sherlock was lying face down in the pillows, snoring gently. John ran one hand lightly down the long length of Sherlock’s back and over the swell of his arse. Sherlock didn’t wake, but hummed in his sleep and began snoring again.

John smiled as he shrugged into a hotel bathrobe, then sat at the desk, opening his laptop. He gazed over the computer at Sherlock’s still form while it booted up, then opened an email.

 _TO:_ _mholmes@holmesenterprises.uk.org_

_Hope this email finds you well. We are still enjoying Victoria._

_I remember at one point you said you had connections to the local law enforcement department. I think the time has come for an introduction, if you could manage it._

He heard the whisper of paper sliding under the door. He sighed, imagining the nervous concierge or busboy delegated to delivering it. It wasn’t necessary to read the paper; he knew what it said already.

_And if you think we’re going to be here a while yet, maybe we should look into getting a flat here. We may be wearing out our welcome at the Empress._

~~~

Three days later they moved their belongings from the Empress hotel to a nice furnished flat, with French doors on a large bedroom that faced a forested mountainside. Sherlock immediately claimed the second bedroom for his experiments, and was online ordering chemistry equipment before John had finished bringing all their stuff up from the taxi.

John looked at the pile of suitcases with bemusement. Three weeks ago they had arrived in Canada with only their thrift store clothes on their backs. Most of the suitcases were filled mostly with Sherlock’s clothes, though John had acquired a few things himself. His gun stayed tucked into his waistband during the move; he still hadn’t figured out Canadian gun laws, and he preferred to keep it hidden out of habit.

After finding places of honour in the sitting room for the violin and medical bag, John explored the bright kitchen and was happy to discover that it was fully equipped with crockery, pots and pans.

“Less takeout for us, now, I think, Sherlock. We can cook at home more.”

“You cook? You surprise me,” Sherlock said, wandering into the kitchen.

“Underestimate me at your peril. I make a mean shepherd’s pie.”

“Really?” Sherlock wrapped his arms around John from behind and purred into his ear. “What else are you hiding from me?”

John turned in his arms and kissed him, slow and sensual. “Well, let’s see. I-”

Sherlock’s phone rang from his jacket breast pocket, startling them both. It hadn’t rung since they’d got them, except when they were calling each other. Sherlock cocked an eyebrow at John, reached into his pocket and answered. “Hello?”

“Joseph Bell?” John heard a tinny voice through the phone. He blinked; he kept forgetting their fake names.

“Speaking.”

“Hi, this is Captain Jamie Xu from VicPD, uh, Victoria Police Department. I was told that you’re a consultant?”

~~~

A morgue was a morgue was a morgue, John thought, no matter where you are in the world. Cold and sterile and slightly creepy.

“We don’t get a lot of murders, maybe five a year? And generally those are bar fights, domestics, that kind of thing,” Captain Xu said. He checked the label on one of the drawers and pulled it open, revealing a body bag. “Pretty safe city, overall. Then this guy shows up in the harbour.”

“The harbour? When?” Sherlock said.

Xu checked his clipboard. “Last night. Call came in around 5:15am.”

John saw Sherlock grit his teeth. Their room at the Empress had looked out on the harbour but they must have been asleep and missed the hubbub. If he had heard about a body, John knew that Sherlock would have jumped out of bed and run out of the hotel to the scene, completely nude. _Small mercies_ , he thought.

“So we can’t ID him, he’s not from around here. Prints didn’t come back. Not our regular kind of thing at all. Frankly, I wasn’t sure where to begin, and then your name and number came across my desk. So.” Xu unzipped the bag and stepped back, holding his arms out in invitation. “What do you think?”

Only John could see Sherlock’s tiny smile as he unzipped the bag the rest of the way, folding its sides down to reveal the whole body. As Sherlock began examining the body, John tried to hide his own smile. It was wonderful to see Sherlock back in his element, only now as an integrated personality. John could practically see the quicksilver of his mind at work, seeing details no one else could, assembling data into a cohesive whole faster than an entire police team. He realized suddenly and with a little embarrassment that he was getting hard, and tried to push those thoughts to the back of his mind (later, he thought), and focus on the case at hand.

Sherlock finished at the corpse’s feet, examining between the toes, then straightened and nodded at John. “Arthur, your opinion please?”

John was pleased that he reacted immediately to his fake name rather than hesitate as he often did. He stepped in and leaned over the body, trying not to flush as Sherlock stood next to him. _Concentrate, Watson._

“No mud under the nails. Any water in the stomach?” he said, looking up at Xu, who shook his head. “So he didn’t die by drowning but thrown in after death. Clear ligature marks around the neck, there. So choked, more likely garrotted – see how thin the marks are?”

“Yes. Not a wire though, something slightly wider. Marks aren’t right for a rope either.”

“Something smoother? Belt?”

“Perhaps.” Sherlock looked up at Xu. “Was the body found clothed or nude?”

“Clothed. Shoes and all.”

“That eliminates auto-erotic strangulation, then. Sometimes people do breath play, it goes too far, the survivor panics and dumps the body. But it’s terribly difficult to get a corpse back into its clothes. I’ll need to see the clothes.”

“Yup, I’ll get them dug up. Probably smell like shit by now though.” Xu said. Sherlock waved his hand dismissively.

John pointed at the body’s ear. “Did you run a check on the earring? Is it a diamond?”

“Cubic zirconia,” Sherlock said. “Cheap, impossible to trace, any department store would carry… wait.”

Sherlock leaned over the body again, peering closely at the ear. “Magnifying glass?” he said.

“Uhhhh,” Xu said, looking around. “I’m not down here much, I don’t know where he keeps things.”

John gritted his teeth. Of course they didn’t have Sherlock’s magnifying glass, they had left London with nothing. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to find another in a department store. He glanced around, and saw a glass half full of water on the desk. He grabbed it, threw the water down the drain in the floor, and handed Sherlock the glass.

“Brilliant,” Sherlock said, smiling at him. He turned his attention back to the ear, peering as best he could through the glass. “Think you could find a pair of tweezers now?”

“That I know,” Xu said. He crossed to the desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a small manicure kit. “Rudy’s always plucking his eyebrows at his desk.”

Sherlock accepted the tweezers without comment, and carefully picked at the earring. “There,” he said at last. He straightened and held up a thread about a centimeter long. “It was tangled behind the earring.” He looked up at Xu. “You don’t happen to have a high powered microscope around here, do you?”

There was in fact a microscope, and Sherlock commandeered it and told John and Xu to go away, so they went for coffee.

“You guys been in Victoria long?” Xu asked, waving off John’s offer to pay.

“About three weeks.”

“Honeymoon?”

John’s heart began to race. He and Sherlock had been living in a kind of a bubble, and he had no idea what the local attitudes were towards homosexuality. This was all new to him, and he was suddenly unsure if he’d have to defend himself, or get a hug and a welcome basket.

“Of a sort,” he said hesitantly. Xu looked puzzled, and John took a breath and said, “The kind of honeymoon where you aren’t actually married, but…”

“I get you,” Xu said. “My neighbour and his husband are from Manchester and they came over for a holiday and just kind of stayed. Lot of British ex-pats here.”

John grinned as he let out his breath in relief. “It’s lovely here, can’t blame them.”

They wandered back to Sherlock, who immediately sat up and grabbed the coffee from John’s hand.

“It’s silk,” he proclaimed. “Likely from a scarf or something similar, got caught in the earring while the murderer was garroting the victim.” He sipped the coffee and scowled. “This doesn’t have any sugar, you know I take sugar.”

“Yes, I do, that’s my coffee, birk. _This_ one is yours.”

“Ah, that’s better. It’s a very specific kind of silk, though, from Suzhou province in China. Quite rare in this part of the world.”

“You’re in luck,” Xu said, reaching for his jacket. “My auntie’s from Suzhou, and sends a scarf to my wife every year. And I happen to know the only place in Victoria that sells scarves from Suzhou.”

“Where?” John said.

“Chinatown. Fan Tan Alley.”

~~

Xu parked on the busy street and pointed south. “Fan Tan Alley’s down there.”

“Can’t we drive there directly?” Sherlock asked.

Xu laughed. “You’ll see. I take it you haven’t been to Chinatown yet?”

“We haven’t gotten out much,” John said, and felt himself blush as Sherlock stared at him.

“Fan Tan Alley is an actual street, but it’s the narrowest street in the Canada,” Xu said. “It used to be the centre for the opium and gambling trade in the city back in the 1910s, but now it’s little touristy shops and that. There’s one store that still sells Chinese goods, that’s where we’re going.”

The street was in fact so narrow that they couldn’t walk side by side, but rather in a kind of diagonal line. John found himself remembering some of the less reputable alleys in London, but unlike London there were shop windows and welcoming entrances.

“Here we go, this is Mr. Chen’s store,” Xu said. He walked into a store that was packed floor to ceiling with baskets, toys, fans, kitchen utensils, and all manner of other things that made John’s brain go into sensory overload.

“Nǐ hǎo, Chén xiānshēng,” Xu said, shaking hands with the man at the till.

“Nǐ hǎo Jamie,” said the man. John couldn’t tell how old he was; the man’s face was etched deeply with lines, but his eyes were bright and he seemed spry and fit.

“Zhè liǎng wèi shì yīngguó lái de Arthur Doyle hé Joseph Bell. Tāmen xiǎng dǎtīng yīxià nǐ cóng sūzhōu mǎi lái de sī jīn.”

The man turned to John and Sherlock with a big smile showing all his teeth. “Hello, hello, good you here. You like my scarves, pretty pretty? You want to buy?”

Xu sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “For God’s sake, Henry, you were born here, your English is as good as mine.”

The man’s smile went up another notch. “I know, Jamie, I just like messing with the tourists.”

“Bié húnào, zhè kěshì móushā ànjiàn!” Sherlock snapped.

Utter silence rang through the shop. Xu and the store owner stared at Sherlock, their mouths hanging slightly open. John was processing his own shock, which was accompanied by a hard edging of arousal at hearing the foreign language in Sherlock’s voice.

Henry nodded at Sherlock, as if something had been decided. “Okay, Mister Bell. Hǎo de. What do you want to know about the scarves?”

Henry led Xu and Sherlock into a corner of the cluttered shop where a number of multicoloured scarves were displayed. They embarked on a long, indepth conversation, half in English and half in Mandarin, that John gave up on following. He walked around the store, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of goods for sale in baskets, shelves, and boxes, no rhyme or reason to their arrangement. He wandered between two shelves and was startled by the sight of some figures behind a window set in the wall. Upon a closer and calmer examination, he saw that it was a display of paper mache dummies dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, playing a game and smoking pipes. The display was clearly very old, with a fine layer of dust and cobwebs on the faces of the dummies.

“Kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Xu said, coming up to the window. “Been there for years. It scared the willies out of me when I was a kid.”

“Kind of museum too, then?”

“Sort of. Fan Tan Alley used to be the opium and gambling centre of the city, very disreputable. There’s little displays like this through the store.”

John looked around. “Where? I don’t see.”

“Oh, this store is actually huge, it snakes through the whole alley behind the other stores. Just keeps going and going, you end up over on Fisgard.”

“Ready, John?” Sherlock said from behind him.

“If you are.”

“I have what I need,” Sherlock said. “I’ll contact you with new information shortly, Captain Xu.” He swept out of the store without looking back.

John shrugged at Xu, who was looking after Sherlock with a slightly awed expression. “He does that, but don’t worry. He just needs to think for a bit.”

“I didn’t know he knew Mandarin,” Xu said, shaking his head. “They were talking so fast I got lost.”

John clapped Xu on the shoulder. “We’ll be in touch.”

He caught up with Sherlock just as he reached the main street. The air felt fresher, sweeter outside the alley. Sherlock pulled on his gloves and pulled his collar up around his neck. “Bit chilly, don’t you think?”

“A bit, I guess.”

Sherlock smiled small, and pulled a scarf from his pocket. He turned John to face him and carefully wrapped the scarf around his neck. The scarf was a vivid blue with emerald green threads, wonderfully silky and warm.

“There. A bit of a sartorial look but it suits you. Brings out your eyes.” Sherlock cupped John’s cheek in his hand, gentle and soft. “Měilì.”

“What’s that mean, then?” John smiled up at Sherlock, feeling ridiculously in love.

“Beautiful.”

John laid his hand over Sherlock’s. “Thank you.” They joined hands and began walking north. “I didn’t know you knew Mandarin.”

“To be honest, I didn’t either,” Sherlock said, laughing.

“What now, then?” John said.

“Home. Need to do some more research. You can eat and get a bit of sleep. We’ll come back at around 3:00am. I’ll wake you at two.”

“What?”

~~~

If Fan Tan Alley was a little eerie by day, it was downright spooky in the middle of the night. The bars had closed two hours earlier (absurdly early, in John’s opinion) and even the drunks had made their way home. The only sounds were the occasional car driving down the street; John thought he could even hear the ocean waves in the harbour from the main street.

Sherlock made quick work on the lock of the store and they slipped in.

“Why are we here again?” John whispered.

“Henry Chen says he does a brisk business on the scarves, selling at least ten a month. And the colour of the thread we found is quite popular. So that’s not an easy path to finding our garrotter. But remember what Xu said; this used to be the centre of the opium trade back in the 1910s and 1920s. I’m not entirely convinced that those days are over.”

“And our victim got caught in the middle.”

“Yes, possibly as an innocent, but more likely as a piece of the puzzle.”

“So what are we looking for?” John said, as he pulled his torch from his pocket. The light illuminated the displays, making the store look even more crowded.

“Hidden passageways, trap doors, secret doors, that kind of thing.”

“Xu said that the store was like a labyrinth, wandering through the whole building.”

“I’ll start here then.”

“Be careful.”

John carefully picked his way through the path between the shelves, feeling slightly claustrophobic. There was only a couple of feet cleared for customers to walk through, with goods crowding up on either side, so he was forced to shine the light down at his feet every few minutes, then up at the room around him. Whenever he saw an exposed bit of wall he tapped it to check for a hollow sound.

He couldn’t tell how far he had gone, losing his sense of space in the maze of the store. He found another cash desk and climbed over, thinking that this would be an ideal place for a hidden compartment. He was checking the shelves under the cash box when he heard a far-off sliding sound, then a muffled crash.

“Sherlock?” he called.

Silence. John was beginning to think he’d imagined the sound, or Sherlock had simply knocked something over, when he heard a noise - a distant, faint, baritone grunt, and the unmistakeable sound of fist on flesh.

John scrambled over the cash desk again and began to run back the way he had come. He snarled as he realized he couldn’t run full out in the crowded store, when his whole body and brain were screaming at him to get to Sherlock, find Sherlock, save Sherlock.

Suddenly he realized that he didn’t recognize the stuff around him, and knew that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He swore as he stopped to look around, trying to get his bearings again.

“Sherlock?” he shouted.

He ran to his left, thinking that the sound of the fight was in that direction, and found himself in a tiny bricked alleyway. He stopped again, confused - had he stumbled outside? - when his torch illuminated a figure crouched at the end of the alley. John’s heart skipped a beat in shock.

“Hey! Hey, are you-” but the man didn’t move, and John belatedly realized he’d run into another of the displays Xu had told him about.

“God damn it,” he said, but the adrenaline was roaring in his ears and he could barely hear himself. He turned and ran back the way he came.

From there it was like a terrible nightmare: disorientation, confusion, and rising terror combined to create a sickening alchemy. Every corner he turned led him further away from Sherlock, but he couldn’t stop running, couldn’t stop going through doors, because Sherlock could be just past the next one. He could hear the thumps and cracks of a fist fight, and it seemed close and too far away at once.

Then he turned one more corner and found himself in the original shop, the first room with the scarves and the main door and the cash desk and the display, and Sherlock was somehow _inside_ the display, fighting hard against a figure all in black. He saw Sherlock land a square punch and thought for a moment that all was well after all, then he saw a flash of scarlet loop around Sherlock’s neck, and the man in black pulled Sherlock against himself, pulling hard on the scarf.

Thinking with his spinal cord alone, John’s shaking hands found a large bronze statue of a Buddha and smashed it against the glass. The window shattered in a wave of shards, and John reached into the display, grabbed the man in black by the shoulders of his coat, and hauled him backwards, up and out of the display and away from Sherlock.

“You don’t touch him, how dare you touch him,” he found himself shouting as he whipped the man around. He got one glimpse of the man’s startled face before he slammed his head onto the floor, and the man went limp.

“Sherlock! You okay? Sherlock!” he called as he pinned the man down with a knee to his back. He craned his head around. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock was standing in the display, staring wild-eyed at the floor. His neck was rubbed raw from the scarf and his face was pale, and he seemed hypnotised or stunned by what he saw on the ground.

“Sherlock! What is it?”

Sherlock did not reply.

“Sherlock, it’s all right. Snap out of it, and find me some rope or something. Sherlock!”

Sherlock turned and glanced at John, his face haunted and terrible, then he climbed out the display window and ran out the front door.

A fear of a very different sort came over John. Quickly he found some more of the scarves and hog-tied the man in black, who was starting to come around. John looked out the door of the store, but was not surprised to see the alley deserted and empty and no Sherlock in sight.

He pulled out his cell phone to call Xu. As the phone rang, John walked to the display and looked in. One the dummies had been knocked over in the midst of the fight. The cheap paper mache head had been smashed and the contents strewn all over the floor. John pointed his torch at the floor and saw hundreds of tiny baggies of white powder.

“Oh Christ,” he whispered.

“Hello?” said Xu on the phone.

~~

Between waiting for Xu and the rest of the police to show up, giving a basic explanation of what had happened, promising up and down that they would come in for a full statement tomorrow afternoon, and finding a cab to take him home, it was nearly dawn before John made it back to the flat. By that time his anger at Sherlock for leaving had grown to teeth clenching levels, countered with worry about the reason for it.

But when he unlocked the front door, he found Sherlock in the sitting room, pacing and frantic.

“Sherlock, what the hell-”

Sherlock stopped his pacing to look at him, and John knew that he had been unaware of the hours since he had left Fan Tan Alley.

“John, you’re here. You’re here,” he said, and suddenly crowded into John’s space. “Fuck me.”

“What?” The word came out as a breathless half laugh.

“Fuck me. I need you. Fuck me.”

Sherlock stepped back and began to strip, fast, dropping his clothes on the floor haphazardly. Despite his confusion, John found himself getting aroused as he always did when he saw Sherlock’s body.

“Where did you go, Sherlock? Answer me that first, all right? I’ve been worried sick.”

Sherlock did not respond, focusing instead on the button and zip of his trousers. John stepped forward and grabbed Sherlock by the wrist, firmly but not rough.

“What’s wrong? You ran like you saw a ghost. You saw the drugs?”

Sherlock froze but John could feel trembling in his muscles.

“Yes, I saw the drugs,” Sherlock snarled. “And I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted it. I wanted all of it. I didn’t know why but the desire for it was so strong. I had to, I had to get out of there.”

John’s heart fell. “Oh Sherlock…”

“And the problem is, I still want it. There’s a… hunger now, I don’t know where it came from but it’s huge and howling, and - I need you to help me, John.”

“I will, I will, but how?”

Sherlock pushed down his trousers and pants, and pushed himself closely into John.  John felt his cock swell against his zip, aroused at the sight and feel of a completely naked Sherlock Holmes pressed up against his clothed body.

“Fuck me,” Sherlock said in his ear, half hiss and half purr. “Take me. Make me feel nothing but you, think of nothing but you. Scrub me clean and make me yours.”

John looked into Sherlock’s eyes, hot and hungry and pleading. He felt a flush run through his body, and he swallowed the rush of saliva in his mouth.

“Right,” he said.

He pulled Sherlock’s head down into a fiery, bruising kiss. Sherlock moaned into John’s mouth. He pulled himself even closer into John’s body, his hips tilting up into John’s. John reached down and grabbed Sherlock’s arse with both hands, squeezing and kneading the flesh there hard enough to hurt. Sherlock gasped, breaking the kiss and throwing his head back. John took advantage of the long expanse of neck in front of him, and bit and sucked at a spot just above Sherlock’s collarbone.

“Oh God John, yes,” Sherlock sighed, then slid down to kneel at John’s feet.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock,” John groaned. Before he could remember how to breathe again, Sherlock had his jeans undone and pushed down the heavy material to his knees, and had sucked John down to the root.

John felt himself go from mostly erect to hard as a rock in seconds. Sherlock’s mouth was hot and wet, and his tongue was doing an intricate dance on the head of John’s cock. “Christ,” John said, laying his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock made a pleading noise around John’s cock, and took John’s hands and moved them to his head.

“Oh God. Sherlock. Wait. Tell me you’re sure, please, just - I need to be sure that-”

Sherlock looked up, his mouth stretched wide around John’s cock, and nodded as best he could without letting go. He placed his hands over John’s and pressed against them hard. All the air fell out of John’s lungs as he wove his fingers into Sherlock’s curls and slowly pulled Sherlock’s face into him. He felt his cock hit the back of Sherlock’s throat, felt the vibrations as Sherlock groaned around him. He renewed his grip and did it again. And again. And again. Sherlock’s hard cock bumped against his leg, and John could feel his orgasm already starting to build in his hips and gut. He thrust into Sherlock’s mouth once more, then pulled Sherlock off. He leaned over, his hands still tangled in Sherlock’s hair, and tilted Sherlock’s head to up meet his.

“Bed,” he said.

Sherlock’s eyes were wide and dark as he gasped, “Yes. Yes.”

He pulled Sherlock to his feet and manhandled him into the bedroom. Yanking the rest of his clothes off while searching in the side table for lube was challenging, but soon John was naked too. He stood up, the tube held triumphantly in hand, but nearly dropped it at the sight of Sherlock on his elbows and knees on the bed, his arse tilted up.

He knelt on the bed behind Sherlock, caressing his back and thighs and arse, sensitizing the skin. “What do you want, hm?” he said; he could hardly recognize his own voice, low and grating. “You want to be fucked, is that it?”

“Yes - yeah - make me yours,” Sherlock panted, pushing his hips backwards towards John.

“You’re already mine,” John ground out.

“Yes - please, John,” Sherlock whined.

John spread lube over his shaking fingers and slid a single finger into Sherlock’s hole, feeling the muscles flutter around him. He worked against the muscles’ pull, adding another finger, and another as they relaxed. He kept one hand on Sherlock’s hip, keeping him grounded and still.

“I’m ready, John, now, please,” Sherlock said, breathless and urgent.

“You sure?” John said, even as he coated his cock in lube. “You sure you’re ready to be fucked?”

“Ye-” Sherlock said, and John lined himself up, grabbed Sherlock’s hips and pushed into Sherlock’s body, slow and sure. Sherlock’s breath punched out in a deep sigh of relief.

Sherlock’s arse was tight and gripped John in a way that made sparks fly all over the surface of his skin. He skimmed his hands up and down the long length of Sherlock’s back and his muscular thighs. Sherlock’s body was beautiful, especially like this, flushed and sweaty and taut, but his mind; his mind was a precious thing, so strong and brilliant, and so, so delicate. John knew what loving Sherlock meant - it meant loving all of him, protecting and caring for his body and his mind together. And if Sherlock needed him to care for his mind by overwhelming the body, John would do it - happily.

“Come on, Sherlock,” John said. He gripped Sherlock’s narrow hips in his hands and began a hard, dirty rhythm. “Come on.”

“Yes - yes - ah - ah - ah-” Sherlock’s words devolved into gasps. John reached around and took Sherlock’s cock into his hand, hard and urgent and dripping, and stroked it in counterpoint to his thrusts.

Sherlock cried out wordlessly, his head thrown back. John felt Sherlock’s muscles clench around him just as semen spurted over his hand and the bed underneath. The sound of Sherlock’s deep voice groaning deeper and deeper sent John over the edge. He pushed hard twice more, then his vision went starry as he emptied himself deep into Sherlock’s body.

When he came back to himself, he carefully pulled out of Sherlock and fell to his side, panting. Sherlock let his hips down to the bed and turned towards John, groaning and sighing.

“You okay?” John said breathlessly. “Was that too-”

“It was perfect,” Sherlock said as he pulled John into a kiss. “Perfect. You’re perfect. Thank you.”

“Budge over a bit, I’m in the damp spot.”

They shuffled over on the bed, and John pulled Sherlock into his arms. Their breath calmed.

“You tired? Want to sleep?” John said.

“No, not yet.”

John looked at him, his brows furrowed. “Really? You’ve been up for a couple of days, and the case is over.”

“Sleep can wait. You want to talk.”

John sighed, and smiled wryly at Sherlock. “No use my trying to hide, is there?”

“Nope.”

They were silent for a long time, until John said, “So. Addiction.”

“Yes, apparently.” Sherlock paused. “I didn’t take any, John. From the shop.”

“I know you didn’t,” John said gently. “Do you… If you thought there was a possibility of some being left behind by the police, would you go back and search for it?”

“No,” Sherlock said immediately. “Not now. This,” he squeezed John in his arms, “this is preferable to any drug.”

“I’m glad.”

Sherlock was quiet for a moment, and the pre-dawn light creeping in the windows allowed John to see him thinking.

“It’s curious,” Sherlock said. “I’m trying to discern which one of them it was that was addicted. All of our histories and personality traits are well mixed up now. Though the question raises some interesting questions in turn.”

“Such as?”

“Where does addiction, the urge to use, lie? If it’s with Victor, then addiction resides in the body; the muscles and blood of the body craving another hit. If it was Sherlock, or Vernet, then its source is in the mind.”

“Or the soul.”

John felt Sherlock smile against his shoulder. “You’re very philosophical for four twenty-five in the morning, John.”

“No better time. And that reminds me, we have to go into Vic PD later today to give our statements.”

Sherlock groaned. “Boring.”

“Necessary.”

“The man I was fighting - he was a relative of the shop owner, correct?”

“Yes. Henry Chen’s nephew. He had discovered the secret passageways in the store, the ones used during the opium trade era. He was using the displays as storage for the drugs he was importing from China.”

“Henry didn’t know about it.”

John laughed. “No. Xu called him in and he identified his nephew. Then he nearly beat the crap out of him before Xu could pull him off.”

“You mean, beat the crap out of him _again_.”

“Not a good night for the kid.”

“No.”

Sherlock was quiet for a long time, and John was beginning to think he’d fallen asleep, when he heard Sherlock speak, low and quiet.

“Addiction is like a beast, John, a dragon inside. You feel it might eat you alive if you don’t pick up the needle, or swallow the pill, or snort the powder. But I will never use again, I will ignore the dragon for the rest of my life, if having it risks my losing you.”

John pulled Sherlock up and kissed him, long and deep, pouring all his love into it. “Anytime you need help fighting that dragon with intense sex, you just let me know.”

“Good man.” Sherlock’s voice was beginning to slur, exhaustion setting in.

“Sleep now, my love.”

“Hmm. Okay.” Sherlock was going heavy in John’s arms, and John could feel sleep pulling on his own eyelids. “That was a good case, John. Do you think Xu can find us another good one tomorrow?”

John laughed as he pulled the blanket up over their bodies. “With you in town, I think good cases will find us.”

 

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my sister in law for the Chinese translations:
> 
> “Nǐ hǎo, Chén xiānshēng” (Hello Mr. Chen)  
> “Nǐ hǎo Jamie” (Hello Jamie)  
> “Zhè liǎng wèi shì yīngguó lái de Arthur Doyle hé Joseph Bell. Tāmen xiǎng dǎtīng yīxià nǐ cóng sūzhōu mǎi lái de sī jīn.” (“Mr. Chen this is Joseph Bell and Arthur Doyle, from England. They want to know about the silk scarves you have from Suzhou.”)  
> “Bié húnào, zhè kěshì móushā ànjiàn!” (Quit fooling around, this is a murder investigation!)  
> "Hǎo de." (Okay)
> 
> Here is some information about the real Fan Tan Allley: http://chinatown.library.uvic.ca/fan_tan_alley. I tried to find pictures of the displays but had no luck.


End file.
